CRCATSIH Program Leader: Judith Dwyer

Program 3: Enabling Policy and Systems

Professor Judith Dwyer is the former head of the Department of Health Care Management in the School of Medicine at Flinders University in South Australia. She was previously the head of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the La Trobe School of Public Health, a former CEO of the Southern Health Care Network in Melbourne, and of the Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide. Judith has worked in the Australian health system for more than twenty years in a broad range of community, hospital and government settings.

Judith’s research is focused on health system governance and design, with a particular interest in Aboriginal health services, and she teaches in a leading Master of Health Administration program in Australia and in China.

Her recent consulting engagements include consultations for the NHMRC review of the Roadmap for Aboriginal Health Research, a commissioned paper on Options for Governance Reform for the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, and a study for Cancer Australia on the experiences of women with gynaecological cancer.

Judith is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and of the Australian College of Health Service Executives, and has extensive experience as a board director and as a senior manager. She was the inaugural president of Women’s Hospitals Australasia, and founding chair of the Australian Resource Centre for Healthcare Innovation. She was listed as one of Australia’s ‘Smart 100’ by The Bulletin magazine in 2003, and awarded the inaugural Women’s Health Award by the Australian Medical Association.

She has published widely in academic and professional journals, and is co-author of the popular book Project Management in Health and Community Services: Getting Good Ideas to Work (Allen & Unwin, 2004).